March 09, 2004 (The INTERNET). The KDE Project today announced the immediate availability of KDE 3.2.1, a maintenance release for the latest generation of the most advanced and powerful free desktop for GNU/Linux and other UNIXes. KDE 3.2.1 ships with a basic desktop and eighteen other packages (PIM, administration, network, edutainment, utilities, multimedia, games, artwork, web development and more). KDE's award-winning tools and applications are available in 49 languages (now including Bengali, Icelandic, Japanese, Lithuanian, Low Saxon, Latin Serbian and Tajik).

KDE, including all its libraries and its applications, is available for free under Open Source licenses. KDE can be obtained in source and numerous binary formats from http://download.kde.org and can also be obtained on CD-ROM or with any of the major GNU/Linux - UNIX systems shipping today.

Enhancements

KDE 3.2.1 is a maintenance release which provides corrections of problems reported using the KDE bug tracking system and greatly enhanced support for existing translations and new translations (including 6 more languages meeting the high release criteria).

For a more detailed list of improvements since the KDE 3.2 release in early February, please refer to the KDE 3.2.1 Changelog.

Additional information about the enhancements of the KDE 3.2.x release series is available in the KDE 3.2 Announcement.

Installing KDE 3.2.1 Binary Packages

Packaging Policies. Some Linux/UNIX OS vendors have kindly provided binary packages of KDE 3.2.1 for some versions of their distribution, and in other cases community volunteers have done so. Some of these binary packages are available for free download from KDE's http://download.kde.org. Additional binary packages, as well as updates to the packages now available, may become available over the coming weeks.

Package Locations. For a current list of available binary packages of which the KDE Project has been informed, please visit the KDE 3.2.1 Info Page.

Compiling KDE 3.2.1

Source Code. The complete source code for KDE 3.2.1 may be freely downloaded. Instructions on compiling and installing KDE 3.2.1 are available from the KDE 3.2.1 Info Page.

KDE Sponsorship

Besides the superb and invaluable efforts by the KDE developers themselves, significant support for KDE development has been provided by MandrakeSoft, TrollTech and SuSE. In addition, the members of the KDE League provide significant support for KDE promotion, IBM has donated significant hardware to the KDE Project, and the University of Tu:bingen and the University of Kaiserslautern provide most of the Internet bandwidth for the KDE project. Thanks!

About KDE

KDE is an independent project of hundreds of developers, translators, artists and other professionals worldwide collaborating over the Internet to create and freely distribute a sophisticated, customizable and stable desktop and office environment employing a flexible, component-based, network-transparent architecture and offering an outstanding development platform. KDE provides a stable, mature desktop, a full, component-based office suite (KOffice), a large set of networking and administration tools and utilities, and an efficient, intuitive development environment featuring the excellent IDE KDevelop. KDE is working proof that the Open Source "Bazaar-style" software development model can yield first-rate technologies on par with and superior to even the most complex commercial software.